Tag Archive for 'Cinema'

Birmimgham IMAX Tour

Published on 31 January, 2010. View Comments Tags: 3D, 70mm, Avatar, Birmingham, Cinema, Film, IMAX, Projector, Theatre, Tour.

A week or two ago, I sent a tweet to @imaxbirmingham on Twitter and asked if I could have a tour of the projection room. I’ve only ever seen projection rooms by looking through the window, and I’ve never seen an IMAX projector in person, so I thought it was worth a go to ask – and it was! The next day, I got an email from their PR manager, Caroline, asking if I’d like to go along one day and see it, as a special once-off treat. So, yesterday (30th Jan), I went along to Birmingham with my dad (he expressed an interest in coming along), and met up with Caroline’s colleague, Sally, who gave us a tour.

So, up we went in the escalator to the 5th floor, which is the upper part of the IMAX theatre, normally off limits to normal visitors. The 4th floor is where you usually exit the theatre, and the 5th is all the behind the scenes stuff. Walking out the escalator, there was a small hand-operated forklift (for lifting the film reels), about 50 boxes of the Harry Potter film, and a few large metal cases with film reels in them. Quick explanation: when they get the film, it’s in boxes, so it has to be manually spliced together into one long film. Anyway, moving on, down the hall we went, and into the projection room!

So, the projection room. First and foremost is the huge IMAX projector – it’s MUCH larger than a 35mm projector, and along with the film reels behind it, it takes up a lot of room, as you can see:

The projector itself is pretty much the same basic idea as any other projector, just bigger. The first thing you notice are the pipes coming out the back of it – the big one is for air cooling, the smaller ones are for water cooling, mainly for the £3,500 Xenon bulb (which, while we’re at it, only lasts 900 hours, which isn’t much compared to, say, my home projector). In fact, the cooling is so critical that there’s a pump room next to the projection room, which has backup pumps if needed, and uses its own dedicated water supply from (I presume) the council. The air also has another role – somehow, through some fancy complicated method, it uses compressed air to keep the film rock solid steady. If you go to and IMAX flick yourself, doubtless you’ll notice that. Compared to normal cinemas, it pretty much doesn’t move at all. Impressive stuff.

Next, obviously, is the 70mm film. Since Avatar 3D was about to be shown, it was loaded into the projector, almost ready to go. As it’s a 3D title, there’s a separate reel of film for both the left and right eye. These run through the projector around the front and then pop out the other side to go back onto two separate reels. The way they do it, is that the film is loaded from the centre of the reel. This means that once it’s done, there’s no need to rewind the reel back to the start point, unlike normal cinemas. This obviously saves time, which is a bonus, plus it means the film doesn’t suffer the extra stress – especially for something like Avatar, which they’ve sold over 51,000 tickets for, which is a lot of screenings.

In the same room they also have a selection of the other currently showing titles – such as Deep Sea, Space Station, and so on.

Now for the noisy part. The audio. It’s pretty simple really. The audio isn’t on the film itself, it’s delivered digitally, either on a DVD or HDD, and stored on one of the servers (two HDDs, one of which is a backup). The IMAX projector sends out a pulse to the server every so often, so the sound is always kept in sync. The soundtrack is a six channel mix, which is then delivered to all of the sixteen power amplifiers, and then to the bi-amped speakers within the theatre. So, obviously, it’s quite loud. And since there’s a DVD drive and microphones hooked up to it all, you actually could have a karaoke night if you rented the cinema.

And a video of the control panel for the whole system (which I got to start the film with myself! ):

Finally, as well as the IMAX projector, there are two other projectors next to it – a 35mm projector, which is used for the pre-show trailers (eg, Pearl and Dean advertising), as well as a generic office-style projector which they use to show the PowerPoint presentation that shows upcoming films at the IMAX and other announcements.

And, of course, here’s a video of the projector in action. It’s very loud – if you’re standing next to it it sounds like a generator. And it’s not even loud compared to the pump room I mentioned earlier – that’s much louder.

So, that’s the projection room. Anyway, walking back out into the lobby and around the maze of passages, I also saw their dishwasher. Yes, a dishwasher. Technically, it’s not used for dishes, but it’s a big silver machine about the length of a car, which washes and dries off all the 3D glasses after they’re used, so they’re nice and clean for new people to use. They’re then carted back out to the lobby, where they’re handed out for the next screening. And lastly, we looked at the back of the screen itself – nothing much back there, it’s mostly just scaffolding holding up the screen (which, indecently, had to be lowered in through the roof when they built it because it’s so large), along with some surprisingly small speakers. The screen itself is silver, with millions of tiny holes in it for the sound to pass through (which most, if not all theatres have anyway). And that’s it!

An interesting thing (I hope I’m allowed to say this ) that Sally mentioned is that she’s flying off to Belgium in the next few weeks to go and find out more about the new digital IMAX projectors, to maybe upgrade the theatre to at a later date. That would mean that the projector wouldn’t need the huge reels behind it, nor would they need all the film either, as the films would then be delivered on a simple hard drive. And one hard drive is a lot better than 50 boxes of heavy plastic! Plus, of course, you get the benefits of going digital – the film doesn’t degrade, the quality is better, and so on.

Overall, it was very interesting seeing all the different parts of the cinema, finding out how it all works, and seeing it all in action, so I would like to, of course, say a big thank you to Sally, Caroline, and the rest of the people at Millennium Point for letting me go and see it all.

Note: All the images shown have further notes explaining them on Flickr, so be sure to click through to see them.

Brüno

Published on 9 July, 2009. View Comments Tags: 18, BBFC, Bruno, Cinema, Entertainment, Movie.

So, I really want to see the new film, Brüno, which comes out tomorrow. However, one problem. The BBFC have rated it as 18, so, strictly speaking, I can’t see it legally until I’m 18, which is next month (August). I’m gonna try to go and see it anyway though. Hopefully I can get in without them noticing me too much. If not, sorry BBFC, but you’re making me do this…I’ll just have to pirate it.

Even worse is that in Australia, Canada, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, and the United States, I would be able to see it, because it’s rated between 11+ and 17+ in those countries. So, I wonder why the BBFC have gone and stuck an 18 on it? You can see it in Sweden at 11, so…wtf? Why do 11 year old Swedish kids get to see it? If an 11 year old can see it, surely it can’t be that bad?

Moral of the story: ratings encourage piracy.

Optoma HD65

Published on 28 April, 2009. View Comments Tags: Cinema, Entertainement, Home, Movie, Projector, Theatre, TV.

A while back, I mentioned how I was amazed at the quality of one of Sony’s high-end home cinema projectors. Well, a few months later, and I decided to consider getting a projector, albeit a cheaper “low-end” 720p model. I did some research, had a look around, and decided to settle on the Optoma HD65. It seems to be the “must have” projector in the sub-£1000 market, and from what I’ve read, it’s a popular model. So, the price. It’s actually pretty good – it’s on sale for £500-700 or so, depending on where you look, and, despite loads of places being out of stock, I found 4 of them available at “LambdaTek” for £560. So, I bought one.

It arrived today, so I brought the box upstairs to my room, opened it, and I was pleasantly suprised. It’s quite small. The overall footprint is a little smaller then the MacBook. Like I said in that other post, I had previously borrowed a few different SD projectors from my dad’s work back in 2000, and from what I can remember, they were considerably larger. The HD65, however, is nice and small. And it’s mostly white, too, which is nice if you want it to be less noticable in a room.

As for placement – most “permanent” installs are mounted on the roof. However, this poses two problems for me. One of which is that our house is rented, so we’re not allowed to drill holes in the roof, and second, the light on the roof in my bedroom hangs down quite far, so if I was to mount it on the roof, the light would block the picture. That said, I found a pretty good spot for it. My windowsill. It’s just big enough to accommodate it, and it’s a good height too – I didn’t even need to prop up the leg on the front of the projector. It also fills the projection wall perfectly, with only about 10-15cm left on each side of the picture.

So, as it got dark (The one downside about projectors is they need a dark room. Oh, and it’s summer time, and my curtains don’t block out any light. Fun. ) I hooked it up to my HTPC, turned it on, set it up (I really didn’t need to change any settings other then the zoom and focus), and put Back to the Future Part I (in 720p) on. And, wow, the picture really is good, even with an old film like BTTF. Okay, so it’s a projector, and it’s never going to beat a high end LCD TV at this price, and you need a dark room and a huge blank wall, but, honestly, it’s worth losing a wee bit of quality for the sake of having a 90″+ screen. The whole movie was so immersive, after 10 minutes, I didn’t notice anything other then the movie. It’s fantastic!

The picture itself is pretty damn good. Between the projector and my TV, there’s not that much of a difference. The TV works better during the day, obviously, but I think the picture quality on both is roughly the same at night, with one exception – the projector, with daytime scenes on movies, looks slightly more washed out, but it’s not that noticable – a minor issue. The other problem is that if you sit too close to the screen (or in my case, the wall), you can notice the individual pixels. However, if I sit more then about two meters from the screen, I can’t see them, and with this size screen…you’ll want to sit more then two meters away. Of course, this is probably less of an issue on the more expensive 1080p projectors, but for a small-average sized room, it’s fine.

Finally, two more complaints. Firstly, and it’s a bit irritating, is the fan noise. It’s fairly noisy when it’s on, but if you’re watching a good movie with the sound turned up, it should be drowned out. Sadly, this is a problem with most projectors as they need to get rid of the large amounts of heat that the bulb generates. Last, the grille on the front of the projector (as you can see in the photo above) gets REALLY hot during use, so much so that I couldn’t touch it for more then about a second without it burning my finger. This is, again, normal for projectors, but it means that they need plenty of ventilation to keep cool during use, and the HD65 is no exception.

Overall, I’m very happy with it so far, and the picture quality is suprisingly good. If you’re in the market for a budget projector (or even a mid-range one), take a look at the HD65. With a small footprint, good looks, great picture quality, and being easy to use too, it’s a great choice and I highly recommend it if you’re a movie buff.

Now, the only thing I have to do is get my dad to like it. He’s very anti-projector, mainly because he’s used to the horrible quality ones they use in pubs / offices and thinks they’re all like that, among other things. I hope I can prove him wrong.

Hollywood makes stuff suck.

Published on 18 April, 2009. View Comments Tags: Cinema, Entertainment, Fail, Hollywood, Movie, Prison Break, Production, Sucks, Television, TV.

Back in early 2006, I heard about a brand new TV series called “Prison Break”. Long story short, I started watching it, and was hooked after the first episode. The first season of Prison Break was really ground breaking, and I enjoyed it immensely.

However, three years later, and Prison Break is currently in it’s fourth season. Which is three seasons too many. See, I think Fox have gone and made seasons two, three, and four simply because they know that by doing so, they can make a profit. Season one of Prison Break was superb, the rest…not so much. It’s not just Prison Break, either. I greatly enjoyed the first season of Heroes, but I’ve since given up watching it. It just became boring and rubbish. Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles is an even bigger mistake – sure, it’s an enjoyable show, but if you ask me, it shouldn’t have been made in the first place. Terminator should have been kept to the four movies, and that’s it. If they make a third season, I’ll probably just skip it. I was bored for much of the second season, and chances are, the third, if made, will suck even more.

My point is, TV shows, and in many cases movies too, simply go on too long and become boring or stupid. And yet the movie and television studios keep on making them because they know they can make money off them. And I just wish they wouldn’t, or if they did, I wish they would actually make them not suck. Case in point: 24. Despite now being on it’s seventh season, it’s still awesome.

Oh, and in case you’ve not yet seen Prison Break, but want to, watch the first season and then stop. DON’T watch the other seasons. But do watch the first.

Marley and Me

Published on 12 March, 2009. View Comments Tags: Cinema, Dog, Entertainment, Labrador, Marley, Marley and Me, Movie, Owen Wilson, Theatre.

I just got back from seeing Marley and Me at the cinema, and I must say, it was a brilliant film. Not because it had car chases (because it didn’t have any), gunfights (because it didn’t have any), corrupt cops (because it didn’t have any), a teenage superhereo (because it didn’t have any), or a superhero (because it didn’t have any), but because it’s one of the few hidden gems that come out of Hollywood these days.

It’s a great film about a man, his family, and the most hilarious Labrador that you will ever see which literally chews everything. I’d give the film a pretty nice 7.8/10, because it’s a great watch. Don’t compare it to other films like the Dark Knight, because they’re totally different. Compare it to other dog-related films. And go see it!

Logitech Harmony 1000 Universal Remote

Published on 5 January, 2009. View Comments Tags: 1000, Cinema, Control, Entertainment, Harmony, Home, Logitech, Mini Review, Remote, Technology, Theatre, Universal.

In June 2007, I purchased a Logitech Harmony 525 remote from eBuyer. Simply put, it’s a universal remote. It takes all your five million existing remotes and crams them into one simple remote that can control pretty much anything via IR. However, since I recently got a new TV, I wanted the 525 in my bedroom for my use, so I suggested to my dad that he get another one for the TV downstairs. One week later, the Harmony 1000 arrived from eBuyer.

The 1000 is a rather high-end universal remote that can control up to 15 devices. That might not seem a lot, but think about it, if you have a TV, projector, screen, AV receiver, BluRay player, HDDVD player, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, HTPC, DVD recorder, and a DTV/cable/satellite box, well…that’s already a lot of devices, and that’s only 11. Throw in a dimmer for your lights, and that brings it up to 12 devices – for a dedicated home cinema setup, 15 devices is more then enough.

So, the 1000. It’s Logitech’s top of the line model, and the first thing you notice about it, is that it’s not shaped like the average remote. This is both a good and bad thing. You kind of need two hands to control it, but I think it’s a good size, and it’s very light too. I was expecting it to be heavy, but it’s not at all heavy. It also has a 3.5″ touch-screen, which is a very unique feature, and a very useful one too. The touch-screen is used for activity-specific controls, however there are still your usual physical buttons. To the right of the touch screen, you have volume, channel, back, mute, previous, next, and the usual up/down/left/right/OK pad. Below the touch-screen is the Activities button, and on the top left is the power button. On the side is a USB port, and on the back is the flap for the battery, plus a small speaker (which is pretty useless, since it just beeps at you sometimes, but you can mute it). The 1000 also feels a lot more solid then the 525 does. The 525 feels like I could easily snap it in half, whereas the 1000 feels very solid.

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I really want a Sony Bravia VPL-HW10

Published on 29 December, 2008. View Comments Tags: 1080p, Cinema, Entertainment, HD, Home, Projector, Sony, Theatre.

I’ve always liked projectors since I first got to use one back in 2000, during the Sydney Olympics. My dad was given permission from his office at the time to bring home one of the work projectors over the weekend. Actually, he managed to bring home several different models over several weekends, and (bear in mind that this was 2000, when we still had a CRT TV, and a VCR) I hooked it up to the VCR and fed the video output into the projector. It was incredibly immersive watching the Olympic games on a massive screen, and I also hooked up a friend’s PS2 to one, and played GT3 on it. It was impressive driving around on a huge screen, and I became hooked. However, I’ve never actually owned a projector because they cost so much, and the price of bulbs is quite a lot.

Now, bear in mind that the projector that I used back then had either a 640×480 or 800×600 resolution (I can’t remember exactly, but it was one of those), and was designed for office work – plus, this is almost 9 years ago, so the technology has come forward a lot in the time. However, you still need to spend a lot of cash to get a decent unit, even now, in 2008 (well, 2009, since it’s a few days away). I’ve seen a few displays of projectors in stores, but I’ve only ever seen one HD projector in action – a 1080p Sony Bravia model at my local Sony Store last year (2007), which at the time cost a whopping £7000. The quality was stunning though, when showing a BluRay disc, and I felt even more compelled to want one. But seriously, 7 grand? No thanks.

I often read Engadget HD for news, and noticed that Sony have recently released a new model, the VPL-HW10, which is a full 1080/24p projector, and you can get it for as low as £1500-£1800. I know that’s a lot of money, especially for a TV (of sorts), but bear in mind that our 40″ HDTV cost close to £1000 last year, and even Sony’s high end 52″ LCD TVs cost between £1200 and £3000. So, such a good quality projector that can probably give an image double the size of a 52″ TV, and for £1500 is a pretty damn good price in my eyes. Plus, after seeing a blog post by someone who actually purchased one, the photos he took of the projected image are, simply put, jaw dropping. I’d say that it actually looks BETTER then our 1080p TV does, and that’s saying something, especially considering our TV is on the higher end of Sony’s mid-range TVs, and that I’m only saying that after seeing some still photos. I’ve not seen this thing in action at all. Take a look, and have a read of the article:

Take note, especially, of the photo of Cristian Bale driving the Lamborghini. You can see pretty much all the detail there is to see. I seriously am impressed, and I really, really, seriously, badly want the Sony VPL-HW10 projector. Now all I need is a way of aquiring that amount of money, and getting my parents to say yes to putting one into our lounge.

Eagle Eye

Published on 21 October, 2008. Closed Tags: Cinema, Eagle, Entertainment, Eye, IMAX, Movie.

I went down to Birmingham today to the IMAX, to see Eagle Eye. I must say, I went to see it not expecting much, however I was greatly surprised – overall, it’s a fantastic movie and the huge IMAX screen really brings it to life – the initial chase scene is pretty amazing, and you really need to be awake when you watch it to notice everything.

The plot is pretty simple, however there are plenty of bits nicked from other films. If you’ve seen War Games, xXx 2: State of the Union, or Die Hard 4, some parts of the film will be familar.

Overall, it’s definitly worth a watch, so if you can, see it at the cinema!

(Trailer)